AI is Reshaping Search: An Interview with Our SEO Lead on the Future of Visibility

The world of search is undergoing its most significant transformation since the smartphone. With the rise of AI-driven tools like Google’s SGE, Bing Copilot, and ChatGPT, the classic “ten blue links” are evolving into direct, conversational answers.

For businesses, this raises a critical question: how do you stay visible when the game is changing so dramatically?

We sat down with our SEO Lead, Tom, to get an expert perspective on the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead and to outline Platform81’s strategy for ensuring our clients don’t just survive, but thrive in this new era.

Thanks for joining us. Let’s dive right in. How do you see AI-driven search impacting SEO over the next 12 months?

Tom: We see it as the most significant shift in search behaviour since the smartphone. In short, the “ten blue links” are being semi-replaced by a direct conversation and a single, AI-generated answer. However, fewer clicks to websites won’t necessarily equate to less visibility or conversions.

First of all, for high-value queries where a user needs real expertise, the click that does happen will be more qualified and valuable than ever before.

Second, AI overviews are rather new and not fully adopted by the masses; they may be trusted for queries like “how long does it take to cook a steak”, but not so much for queries like “what to do if my property sale falls through after exchange”.

The next 12 months will be a sorting-out period. Businesses that rely on thin, low-quality content will become more invisible. Businesses with genuine authority and expertise, whose websites are the source of truth for the AI, will come out stronger with both better search visibility and more brand mentions within AI answers.

That makes sense. It sounds like becoming the ‘source of truth’ is the new goal. What is your plan to ensure our clients’ sites remain visible and valuable within these AI-generated results?

Tom: Exactly. Our plan is to move beyond just ‘ranking’ for keywords and focus on making your brand the undeniable authority in your sector. We don’t want you to just be a link in the results; we want you to be the source the AI cites in its answer.

Our strategy is built on three core pillars:

1. Building Your Brand as an ‘Entity’: We work to establish your brand as a recognised, trusted entity in Google’s eyes through off-page SEO. This involves creating a web of connections across the internet that all point to you as the expert.
2. Developing Deep Topical Authority: We don’t just target individual keywords. We build out comprehensive content hubs that cover a topic so thoroughly that AI has no choice but to reference your site for a complete answer.
3. Technical Excellence: We ensure your website’s code and structure (using things like Schema markup) clearly communicate exactly what your content is about. Think of it as technical SEO adjustements that makes it incredibly easy for AI to understand and trust your information. We know that Bing Search has strong ties with OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, so we have a few strategies to ensure your site can be at the forefront of information retrieval systems from AI crawlers.

How will this affect traditional content strategy? How will you adapt keyword targeting for more conversational or intent-based AI queries?

Tom: This is a change we welcome because it’s how we’ve always preferred to work. We move away from clunky, robotic keywords and focus on the real questions your customers are asking. And we keep on top of new trends, which is something that traditional SEO agencies often overlook, being too stuck in keyword lists spat out by automated tools.

Our process is to ‘think like a human, not a search engine’. We dive deep into customer intent – the ‘why’ behind the search. The content we create, and our on-page seo strategies are not just about creating one page to target a single keyword; it’s a complete resource that answers the primary question and all the follow-up questions that naturally come next. This makes your content far more useful for a human reader and positions it perfectly as a comprehensive source for an AI-generated summary.

Speaking of summaries, are you optimising content or schema specifically for AI Overviews or featured snippets?

Tom: Absolutely. It’s baked into our process from the start. We structure content deliberately to make it easy for AI to digest and repurpose. This includes:

• Direct Answers: Providing clear, concise summaries right at the top of the page.
• Logical Formatting: Using clear headings (H2​,H3​), bullet points, and numbered lists that break down complex information into bite-sized chunks.
• Advanced Schema Markup: We implement specific structured data that explicitly tells Google, “This part is a question, this is the accepted answer, and this is how it relates to the author’s expertise.” We are essentially spoon-feeding the AI the exact information it needs, in the format it prefers.

This leads to a big question for the whole industry. How do you plan to measure visibility and performance from AI search, given that traditional analytics may not capture it?

Tom: You’ve hit on the key challenge. The old model of simply counting clicks from a search results page is becoming a little outdated. While the analytics tools are still catching up, we’re broadening our definition of success.

Not many tools currently track this accurately. Our preferred SEO tool, Ahrefs, recently started offering this, and we are looking at integrating this data into our campaigns very soon.

In the meantime, our measurement model focuses on business impact more than vanity metrics. Ultimately, the proof is in the pudding. We tie our efforts directly to the metrics that matter to you: the number of qualified leads, form submissions, and, of course, the revenue in your bank account.

It’s clear you’re using AI on the client-side, but how are you integrating AI tools into your own internal workflow?

Tom: We see AI as a powerful co-pilot for our human experts, not a replacement for them. We use a suite of sophisticated AI tools to make our team faster, smarter, and more effective.

• For Research: We use AI to analyse massive datasets, uncover hidden customer questions, and map out entire topic clusters at a speed that would be impossible for a human alone.
• For Content: Our strategists use AI to generate data-driven content briefs and frameworks. This ensures our human writers have all the necessary angles and entities to cover. The final content is always refined by one of our SEO experts to ensure quality, optimisation, and accuracy.
• For Technical SEO: AI helps us audit code, analyse log files, and identify complex technical issues at scale, allowing us to find and fix problems that could hold your site back.

Finally, looking ahead, what steps are you taking to future-proof our clients’ SEO strategy as AI search continues to develop?

Tom: The best way to future-proof a strategy is to anchor it in principles that don’t change. Algorithm-chasing is a short-term game. Our approach is to build a durable, long-term asset for your business.

The core of our future-proofing strategy is this: Helping you become the brand that people—and therefore AI—trust implicitly in your field.

This means focusing relentlessly on:

• Building a Recognisable Brand that has a real-world reputation.
• Demonstrating Genuine Expertise through best-in-class content and resources.
• Providing a Flawless User Experience on a technically perfect website.

No matter how the technology changes, search engines will always have the same goal: to provide their users with the best possible answer. By making your website the undeniable source of that answer, we ensure your strategy is built to last.

AI is here to stay, and whether we as an agency or you as a business owner, we have to evolve with it or risk falling behind those who have embraced it.